84 The Canary. 



out hearing him sing. No one, we will venture to say^ 

 could be possibly taken in by so silly a trick as the one 

 thus asserted to be commonly practised by dealers. 

 Moreover, for a man to do so systematically, even could 

 similar cages and birds be made and obtained sufficiently 

 cheap to make it worth the while, which I very much 

 doubt, would most assuredly be the shortest way to 

 ruin he could possibly devise. He might, perhaps, 

 succeed in taking in an unwary customer once, but 

 would any one in his senses suffer himself thus to be 

 duped a second time ? Most assuredly not ; but setting 

 this palpable fact aside, we say again the song is utterly 

 unlike that of the English bird in every respect; once 

 heard it can never be mistaken, even by the most un- 

 musical ear; and to be appreciated it requires, we are 

 sure, only to be heard. If I wanted a bird merely for 

 its song, I would rather give a pound for a German 

 than I would give half-a-crown for an Englisli bird, or, 

 indeed, have one given me for nothing. The best are 

 said to come from the Tyrol and the Hartz, where 

 large numbers are annually reared and sent into every 

 part of Europe. For many years past four Tyrolese 

 alone have been known to bring over as many as sixteen 

 hundred birds, each in a separate little wooden cage 

 about six inches square, in which he has to travel more 

 than one thousand miles, and live till he is sold to some 

 purchaser in a dealer's shop in England. The trade in- 

 creases steadily almost every year, as their song is ap- 

 preciated by the English public, and their price main- 

 tains its position in the market, for almost every pro- 

 prietor of a gin-palace finds it to his interest to have 



